Canadian scientist co-leads team on Arctic mapping mission

Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator’s 1569 map of the Arctic would have had huge political appeal for his depiction of open water, and potential shipping routes, between mainland North America and the polar region.

Mercator’s depiction was wrong, and more than 400 years later a team co-led by Geological Survey of Canada scientist Marc St-Onge is still trying to get it right for all the same reasons: new shipping passages, land-use priorities and natural resources exploration.

Roughly 60 per cent of the Arctic — particularly off-shore — is still “poorly known,” even after six of the circumpolar countries collaborated to produce a first-of-its-kind Geological Map of the Arctic, which was released this year.

Canada was the lead country in the project, which also involved Russia, Denmark, Norway, the U.S. and Sweden.

Today’s Geological Map of the Arctic synthesizes centuries of science, field work and aboriginal knowledge that Mercator wouldn’t have had in 1569.

“The polar region was thought to be a continent divided into four quadrants by four northward flowing rivers, which drained the Atlantic and Pacific oceans,” said St-Onge. “Towards the North Pole, and around that polar mountain, Mercator envisioned a big whirlpool draining the north flowing rivers. All of this is straight from Norse mythology.”

Mercator also described the North Pole as “a mountain of iron,” which was, again, mythological.

Mercator’s error was only discovered after backers, such as Queen Elizabeth I, dispatched explorer Martin Frobisher to search for the Northwest Passage and gold, and then to establish a colony.

History shows Frobisher found a bay, not the Northwest Passage, the gold was black ore and the colony was abandoned after several ships were lost en route, including one carrying bricks and lumber for housing and another ferrying beer for the new community to weather the winter, said St-Onge.

“It’s only now that as the ice cover retreats due to changing climate that we have these opportunities to survey the off-shore regions in the Arctic and improve our knowledge of the submerged land forms and land features,” St-Onge said.

There is also potential for economic development.

“Central-northern Norway, for example, is host to a number of well-known lead-zinc deposits,” St-Onge said. “Lead zinc is important for batteries, rechargeable energy cells. Are there similar deposits in Canada?”

The map also gives circumpolar countries a glimpse into the history of the Arctic and the geological origins of features, such as the contentious Lomonosov Ridge.

This 1,600-kilometre ridge stretches as a vast, underwater chain of flat-topped mountains from Canada’s Ellesmere Island to the European continental shelf in the Barents Sea.

But 61 million years ago there was no North Atlantic Ocean or Eurasian basin and the ridge was part of the European continental shelf, explained St-Onge.

He recalled the “horrified silence” when he told this to Canadian parliamentarians in 2009.

“It’s a broken off, or a rifted, piece of the European continental shelf. But for the past 61 million years, it’s been tracking away from the European continental shelf, as part of the North
American plate, to where we now find it sitting beneath the North Pole,” St-Onge said.

In other words, the Lomonosov Ridge travelled 900 kilometres with North America, but that’s not where it originated. This could have huge implications for future oil and gas development in the Arctic.

“If the Lomonosov Ridge ends up being one jurisdiction’s extension of the continental shelf, then the oil and gas prospects become relevant to that country,” St-Onge explained. “Oil and gas fields tend to be found in the geology that makes up continental shelves.”

In 2007, Russian scientists “triggered a lot of emotional response,” by planting a Russian flag on the polar seabed to stake their claim to the ridge, said Neil Melvin, head of the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute’s armed conflict and conflict management program.

“Although, practically, it probably has very little or no significance,” said Melvin. “The Arctic is changing with the reality of ice retreat opening up questions around territorial borders, which were not on the table before. We have this process of delimitation underway — primarily through the UN and the Law of the Sea. But tensions have been created around that with claims by
various countries. So these are quite murky issues.”

This, said St-Onge, is why continued geological mapping carries such weight.

“The set of laws that will ultimately be used to partition the Arctic are based on geology, not on historic usage. The Law of the Sea specifies that any country is sovereign over its continental shelf, which tends to coincide with the 200 nautical miles of exclusive economic activity which every coastal country has. But it also provides for a mechanism to extend beyond the 200 nautical miles. To do that the country has to demonstrate an extension of the continental shelf.”

According to St-Onge, knowing what lies beneath the ice, water and snow puts governments in a better position to make exploration and land-use decisions.

“It doesn’t mean everything has to be harvested or exploited. But to make the decision as to whether we allow mining in an area, create a park or reserve it for traditional land use requires the best possible data.”

The first people who need this information are the people living there.

“The northern communities and the three territorial governments have to decide whether they encourage more development, more exploration,” St-Onge said. “What are the other competing uses for the same tract of land? In order to make the right decisions they have to know what’s there.”